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Preventable or not: Trailer dinged by dock door

John Doe began backing his trailer under a motor-driven rollup dock door, which unexpected began to roll down and hit the top rear of trailer. Was this a preventable accident?

Sick of spinning his duals on snow and ice-covered roads in the Northeast, trucker John Doe happily accepted the task of delivering a load of colorful belly boards and swimwear to the Supreme Surfer Supermarket in Cocoa Beach, Fla. Now, days later, he was almost to his destination, sitting proudly behind the wheel of a beautiful, powerful new conventional with bright red paint, highly-polished aluminum wheels, chrome stacks, an ample supply of fresh celery sticks and a soul-stimulating stereo that “probably could blow out the windshield,” he mused.

Life was good. Before long, it’d be warm enough at home to crank up his ol’ Harley Sportster, plant tomatoes, do some bass fishing, sight-in the new scope on his Winchester and start restoring the rusty 1968 GTX 440 Magnum convertible he’d purchased from Joe Bob at Asa Sharp’s garage in Tupelo.

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Let’s see, turn right on this road, go three blocks and … hey, there it is, dead ahead, the Supreme Surfer Supermarket! After waiting for another trucker to exit the dock by passing under a motor-driven rollup door, Doe began backing his trailer, cautiously eyeballing his mirrors. What the … ??? Oh no!!! The rollup door began to roll down … fast … and … WHUMP! … hit the top rear of his trailer!

An agitated store manager suddenly materialized and yelled at Doe to pull forward, but that maneuver ripped the dock door into itty-bitty pieces, earning Doe a preventable-accident warning letter, which he contested. Asked to render a final decision, the National Safety Council’s Accident Review Committee immediately ruled in Doe’s favor. There was no way that Doe could have anticipated or escaped the door’s dastardly descent, NSC said.